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LATE-BREAKING NEWS

• As part of a somewhat expensive Amazon ad campaign, we've dropped the price on The Fugitive Heir to $0.99. If this leads to better follow-on sales of The Fugitive Pair and The Fugitive Snare, we'll leave it at this price. C'mon, buy the complete set!

• All current issues of Stupefying Stories are now available free for Kindle Unlimited subscribers. See the right column for links. For non-US customers, these should automatically redirect to your local manifestation of Amazon. If they don't, let me know.

• Yes, we are in fact reading new submissions. Our revised submission guidelines aren't ready for public consumption yet, so you'll just have to send your story to submissions@rampantloonmedia.com and take your chances. One story at a time, please! No multiple submissions and no simultaneous submissions!

SHOWCASE IS MOVING BACK IN WITH ITS PARENTS!

As you may have guessed from the new banner, we're consolidating the Stupefying Stories blog and SHOWCASE webzine into one new site. In the meantime, before it's gone for good, you really should check out all the great stories on the old SHOWCASE site.

Wednesday, November 4, 2015

From the creators of Stupefying Stories comes our new sister publication, THEIAN JOURNAL. It’s a bit unearthly—a bit alternative—these are decidedly different from our usual selection of SF/F stories,
reflecting an entirely different editorial philosophy, yet brought to
you with our same dedication to finding excellent stories by writers you
may not have read before. Issue #1 features:

• THE FISSURE OF ROLANDO, by Judith Field
• ADROIT, by David Williams
• TAKING A BREATHER, by Jean Davis
• A SCORPION WITHIN, by Alison Grifa Ismaili
• PLAINFIELD, NEW YORSEY: 2114, by Angele Ellis
• WHEN WE ARE WHOLE, by Gary Emmette Chandler

THEIAN JOURNAL: We think you’ll agree—sometimes different can be very good.

Now available exclusively* for Kindle and Kindle Reader apps at these
links, for the special introductory price of just $0.99 USD—or free, for Amazon Prime and Kindle Unlimited subscribers.

Saturday, October 31, 2015

When we launched the e-book version of Stupefying Stories, we
included a “three years and out” self-destruct clause in the contract.
Four years later that self-destruct clause continues to work as
designed, so this is your LAST CHANCE to buy these vintage 2012 issues at special closeout prices before they go out of print, never to be re-released again.

STUPEFYING STORIES 1.9
CLOSEOUT PRICE: $0.99 USD

GOES OUT OF PRINT: NOVEMBER 15, 2015

For 1.9 (a.k.a., the “mid-October” issue) we pulled out all the stops
and turned the creepiness factor up to 11. Featuring another awesome Aaron Bradford Starr
cover that deserves to be a poster, this one starts with the beautiful
and elegiac “Between Life and Oblivion,” ends with “Going Out With a
Bang”—a story that, as one reviewer put it, “puts the black in black humor”—followed by Thomas Pluck’s
clever little exit sting, “The Old-Fashioned Way,” but in-between it’s
full of spooks and specters, ghosts and ghoulies, and things that go bump! in the night. (Or sometimes not: check out Robert Hobson’s
story.) In particular, if “The Florence” or “The Jade Box” don’t give
you the shivers, you’d better check your pulse, because you just might
be dead.Contents

For this one I turned the Editor-in-Chief’s chair over to M. David
Blake, who has been with us since the old Friday Challenge days and has
served as Technical Director and Associate Editor of STUPEFYING STORIES
from the very start. I gave him a budget and free rein to select the
stories, as well as permission to experiment with the design, and I’m
pleased to see that he picked some stories I would have picked—some I
would not have picked—actually pinched a few from my production
queue—and in the end, produced a book that is bigger, in some ways
better, and definitely recognizable as a STUPEFYING STORIES book and yet
distinctively different.

Good stuff. I liked it so much, I gave Mr. Blake the budget and
permission to go ahead with STRAEON. This book should not be taken as a
precise blueprint for STRAEON, but if you want some sense of how my
editorial judgment and his editorial judgment differ—and we do differ;
our tastes are at best similar, not congruent—then buy and read this
book.

P.S. And if you’re wondering about the odd volume numbering: it’s an
Amazon thing. We wanted to call this one 2.1 but ended up having to call
it 1.10 for Amazon’s sake.

By the end of 2012 STUPEFYING STORIES had finished evolving from our
initial vision of a publication that didn’t recognize genre labels to
being a straight-up SF/F publication, and this book is the apotheosis of
that development. It had also evolved from being an “anthology series”
to being something that clearly walked, talked, quacked, and otherwise
behaved like a monthly magazine, so we gave up trying to resist that
label as well, and decided to let it become the monthly SF/F magazine it
clearly wanted to be.

I am proud of every single story in this book, but especially so of “Moonbubble,” by Eric Cline.

Then again, if we were ever to adopt a story as a manifesto, it would be “We Talk Like Gods,” by Jon David.

October, what a month. People in this world are so fascinated with their
“holidays” that they set aside any remaining good sense and judgment
they have to allow for fun and festivities. Fools. They make the tasks
of the underworld disgustingly easy, even more so than in the days of
the plague...

I answered the door myself, as I always did when the shelter had
visitors after dark. The gaunt man on the doorstep swept aside his cloak
with one hand. “I am Nikolai,” he said. “I haff come to take Lucy
home.” More than his emaciated physique, the power of his stare gave him
away...

“Excuse me, young man?” Oh great. I was just about to level-up, now
this. I finally get a 15-minute stretch of mindless zombie-killing fun,
and grandma has to bring me back to reality. “Young man, I was told that
you’re tech support?”...

Toby stared at his ticket: Bus 666 to Hell. After a lifetime in
politics, always with the best intentions, this was his reward? The last
thing he remembered were chest pains and falling to the ground...

Late one evening, the sound of fluttering wings disturbed a suburbanite
who was sitting in his easy chair, reading a book. The man got up to
investigate, quickly assessed the situation, and then yelled at the top
of his lungs...

Sebastian Kane flew across the second floor of the mansion like his ass
was on fire and his head was catchin’. His blue shirt was torn and
bloody, his jeans were rags and equally as red, his chest would need an
entire spool of thread to put back together...

Jennifer stared at the man sitting across from her. “Excuse me, what was
that again?” “I’m a vampire.” “You’re a vampire?” “Yes.” “As in—dead?”
“We prefer the term undead.” “As in a
drink-blood-sleep-upside-down-live-forever-kind-of-thing?” “In a
nutshell.” “Any other tidbits I need to know about?”...

The hunchback reminded Cassius of his first servant, Grimly. The
gorilla-like-arms, heavy brow, and dull eyes; it was as if Grimly had
returned from the Abyss. Cassius supposed that’s why he agreed to
interview Erogi in the first place...

Dr. Edward “Eddie” McDaniels knew that if there were two things that
went together, it was horrible weather and revenge-obsessed undead. And
that night, the weather was positively crappy. Wave after wave of heavy,
autumn rain crashed against the sliding glass door. In the center of
the living room, Eddie waited...

On a morning in late October, the alien stepped out of his spaceship
into the bright morning sun in the Boston Commons. For all intents and
purposes, Gomph looked like an oversized porcupine. At 60 kilograms, he
stood nearly one-and-a-half meters tall...

TRANSACTION COMPLETE **PLEASE READ THIS FULL DISCLAIMER BEFORE CLOSING**
Thank you for pressing the “Accept” option on the previous page and
legally completing the transfer of ownership of rights and obligations
of authorship in the work of fiction entitled My Five Minutes in Hell
(MFMIH), penned by Howard Phillips Derbury sometime in ...

In retrospect, I should’ve realized there was something bizarre about
Analyn much earlier than I did, certainly before we’d been dating for
six weeks. But I was a college freshman, barely away from my
overprotective mother, and eager to live life...

I’d been born and raised in sunny Florida, so isn’t it ironic that the
one thing I fear most in life is a night-stalking bloodsucker? I’ve
spent many nights staring out my bedroom window at eyes glaring back at
me from the trees. My friends and family think I’m crazy, of course...

Saturday, October 24, 2015

"...the best of the trilogy. KUDOS!"

Years ago, Terran Scout David Rice crash-landed on the lost colony world of Aashla, where he rescued and fell in love with the beautiful Princess Callan. Pledging his life and sword to Callan and his adopted home world, David thought he'd never see another Terran again—until the night the sky was lit by weapons fire, as another starship tried and failed to blast its way through Aashla's deadly planetary ring. Now, rushing to the crash site, David and Callan find they're too late, as their bitter rival, Prince Rupor, has gotten there first...

For on a world of swords and airships, even a wrecked starship can overthrow the balance of power!

SCOUT'S DUTY is an exciting modern homage to the classic tales of planetary romance made famous by writers such as Edgar Rice Burroughs and Leigh Brackett. If you like your heroes unabashedly heroic, your heroines feisty and true, and your plots filled with dangers and twists at every turn, you'll enjoy SCOUT'S DUTY.

Now available exclusively for Kindle and Kindle Reader apps at $3.99 USD for the US edition, or free for Kindle Unlimited and Amazon Prime customers!

But wait, there's more!

To celebrate the release of SCOUT'S DUTY, we're offering this special get-up-to-speed-on-the-whole-trilogy deal! For a limited time, we're making SCOUT'S HONOR and SCOUT'S OATH available for just $0.99 USD each, or free for Kindle Unlimited and Amazon Prime customers!

"Pulp fiction in the best meaning of the term. The story moves along at a cracking pace and you care about the characters."

When Terran Scout David Rice climbs from the wreckage of his starship’s escape pod, he finds himself transported from the space age to the steam age in the blink of an eye. Drawn to the sounds of fighting, David immediately throws himself into a desperate battle against overwhelming odds to save the life of a beautiful young princess.

Now, marooned without hope of rescue, David is swept into a world of steam-powered airships, treacherous pirates, brutal savages, bloodthirsty monsters, royal machinations, and plots within plots, where matters of strength and honor are most often settled with the clash of swords. As he struggles to learn the strange ways of this new world and who he can trust, one thing becomes clear to him: he must put aside his growing feelings for Her Highness and do everything in his power to return her to her family, even though this means giving her up to the prince she’s pledged to marry.

Told in a relentlessly fast-paced and breathless style, SCOUT’S HONOR is an exciting modern homage to the classic tales of planetary romance made famous by writers such as Edgar Rice Burroughs and Leigh Brackett, as well as the cliffhanger-driven energy of the early science fiction movie serials. If you like your heroes unabashedly heroic, your heroines feisty and true, and your plots filled with dangers, twists, turns, and double-crosses upon triple-crosses, you’ll enjoy SCOUT’S HONOR.

"This is the kind of scifi story that made me fall in love with science fiction long ago."

"I can't wait for the sequel!"

(And you don't need to, because here it is!)

"If anything, it's better than the first book."

"Many times book sequels are either let downs that show the original work was just a fluke, or a far better story that diminishes the original work. Happily, Scout's Oath is neither... it is a wonderful continuation of a thrilling story-line that not only stands by itself as a fantastic and fast-paced action thriller, but also extends and gives delightful background and "back-story" to Scout's Honor."

"Swashbuckling fun! Scout's Oath picks up where Scout's Honor left off, with more adventures of David Rice, Princess Callan and a motley crew of allies, enemies, and other characters. This one brings new high-tech challenges to bear on Princess Callan's low-tech world, but as always, the stalwart David, Princess Callan and their friends and supporters bravely jump into the fray to defend it. Full of honor, bravery, love, and a great sense of humor, this is an excellent follow-on to Scout's Honor. This is a great read for the whole family—with characters you care about and that you can identify with. Read Scout's Honor first, then this one. I'm looking forward to the next one!"

"It's an epic heroic tale, full of derring-do, rotten bad guys, some really funny dialogue, and people in love. Highly recommend[ed]..."

Monday, March 23, 2015

Updated 3/28/15:ARGH! We just learned that because of some as yet not fully understood feature of our new web site design, a lot of people were clicking on the link below and going off to the blank white screen of Internet Limbo. The link is now fixed, but because it was only intermittently functional for this past week, we've decided to extend the 99-Hour Sale to midnight, March 31.

Question: In the meantime, we do have a case of books in-hand. We aren't set up to sell direct, but do have an established relationship with a local (to us) bookstore that sells on Amazon. Would you like it if we started selling books through them, with the guaranty that books would be in-stock and get same-day shipping? Let us know.

The box of copies of STUPEFYING STORIES 1.14 has at last arrived! (Memo to self: specify expedited shipping next time). It's our first print edition in five years, and my God, the thing actually looks like a real book!

The photo doesn't do it justice—I blame the lighting conditions. (Yes, that is freshly fallen snow in the background. Welcome to Spring in Minnesota.) But I am so excited about this thing that I've decided to declare a 99-Hour Sale. Order this book direct, at this link—https://www.createspace.com/5369969—between now and midnight on Friday, enter this discount code—YXC4AZFK—and you can get this awesome artifact of the post-digital publishing age for 15% off!

Sunday, March 15, 2015

Winter is almost over, and that means it's time for STUPEFYING STORIES to emerge from hibernation with a terrific new lineup of stories! Featuring:

50 FOOT ROMANCE, by Eric J. Juneau
CITY OF OPPORTUNITY, by Jānis Zelčāns
THE ALIENS WENT DOWN TO GEORGIA, by Peter Wood
THIRTY NINE, by Shedrick Pittman-Hassett
RIGEL’S MISSING TAIL, by Antha Ann Adkins
THE BONE POINTER, by Chuck Robertson
GODS ON A HILL, by G. J. Brown
THE ANNIVERSARY GIFT, by Gary Cuba
MASTERS, by Jason Lairamore
WATER PRESSURE, by Anna Yeatts
EMISSARY, by Matthew Lavin
THE GHOSTLESS MACHINE, by Austin Hackney

Always fun and exciting, never predictable, STUPEFYING STORIES is the great new reading you've been looking for!

* A note about the print edition: If you buy the
book through Amazon, you'll probably get a better deal, especially if
you're an Amazon Prime customer. However, if you buy the book through
the CreateSpace eStore, you'll double what we make from the sale. Just thought you'd want to know that.

San Francisco, 1904: Thirteen-year-old Percival Drew expected to spend
the summer doing little more than tinkering with those new-fangled
gasoline-powered motorcars. But that was before an insane scientist took
an unhealthy interest in his cousin Quincey's very rare blood type...
Before people began vanishing from the streets, to reappear as the mad
doctor's undead minions... Before the villain's infernal devices gave
him the ability to strike at will, destroying all who opposed him!

With chaos descending on San Francisco, only two boys know the secret to defeating the undead doctor. But can they act in time?

* A note about the print edition: If you buy the book through Amazon, you'll probably get a better deal, especially if you're an Amazon Prime customer. However, if you buy the book through the CreateSpace eStore, you'll double what the author earns from the sale. Just thought you'd want to know that.

After crash-landing on the lost colony world of Aashla, Terran Scout
David Rice rescued Princess Callan, kidnapped heir to the throne of
Mordan. In fighting his way across half the planet to see her home
safely, he won her love, and then her hand in marriage. Now David and
Callan want nothing more than to settled down and live happily ever
after...

But a man can't do what David has done without making powerful enemies, and his enemies want revenge!

Told in the form of a lead-in novella and a novel, SCOUT'S OATH
opens with the story of a young thief who risks his life to bring David
and Callan a warning that starts them on a desperate race against time
to find and rescue her parents. Then, to stop the outbreak of
planet-wide war, David must surrender to King Rat, ruler of the tunnels
beneath the city-state of Beloren, and it falls to Callan to pull
together a band of unlikely heroes and organize his rescue. Can an old
pirate, a young thief, a crusty doctor, and a daring airship pilot help
Callan do the impossible?

SCOUT'S OATH is an exciting modern homage to the classic tales of
planetary romance made famous by writers such as Edgar Rice Burroughs
and Leigh Brackett. If you like your heroes unabashedly heroic, your
heroines feisty and true, and your plots filled with dangers and twists
at every turn, you'll enjoy SCOUT'S OATH.

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Apparently the definitions of “flash” and “short-short” stories are more slippery than I thought. To answer these and other questions that have come in in the past few days:

STUPEFYING STORIES magazine and the STUPEFYING STORIES PRESENTS anthology series are now CLOSED to unsolicited submissions until March 31, 2015, so that we can give our full attention to book production. We will be OPEN to new submissions from April 1, 2015, through September 30, 2015, and then CLOSED again from October 1, 2015, through March 31, 2016.

STUPEFYING STORIES SHOWCASE, our webzine, remains OPEN to new submissions, but at this time we are considering only flash and short-short stories—that is, only stories of 2,000 words in length or less—for SHOWCASE.

While SHOWCASE shares the same main submissions address (submissions {at} rampantloonmedia {dot} com) as the rest of the STUPEFYING STORIESline, to fast-track your submission for SHOWCASE only, please send it to submissions {at} stupefyingstoriesshowcase {dot} com. One story at a time, please, and while we will consider simultaneous submissions, exclusive submissions jump to the front of the line.

STRAEON has a completely separate submissions queue and editorial process. STRAEON is now OPEN to new submissions, and while STRAEON will consider more than one story at a time by the same author, STRAEON will not consider simultaneous submissions. To submit to STRAEON, address your email to M. David Blake, Editor, at submissions {at} vintageseason {dot} com.

Monday, January 5, 2015

To kick off 2015, we're announcing some important changes in how we're handling submissions.

STUPEFYING STORIES
The complicated reading period schedule we tried to use in 2014 didn't work. In order to clear time in our schedule to concentrate on book production, STUPEFYING STORIES magazine and the STUPEFYING STORIES PRESENTS anthology series are now CLOSED to unsolicited submissions until March 31, 2015. We will resume reading new submissions from April 1 through September 30, and then be closed again from October 1, 2015, to March 31, 2016. Six months on; six months off. This should be more manageable.

STUPEFYING STORIES SHOWCASE
Beginning today, our companion webzine, SHOWCASE, gets its own submissions queue: submissions {at} stupefyingstoriesshowcase {dot} com. SHOWCASE remains OPEN to new submissions, but—and this is important—submissions sent to this email address will be considering only for publication in SHOWCASE, and we will consider only flash- and short-short fiction. We're also experimenting with an "express" process for this queue, so instead of our usual confirmation-of-receipt and tracking numbers and all that, expect either an acceptance or a form rejection within a week.

STRAEONSTRAEON is now OPEN for new submissions—but there are some changes for 2015. To quote the editor, M. David Blake:

These aren't "stupefying" stories. They are not "amazing," "astounding,"
or "mystifying" either, but they are the best I could find, pure and
sim—no, that's not right either. There isn't anything "simple" about
these stories, nor do they come with any guarantee of purity.
You see, STRAEON isn't restricted to "safe," or "nice" stories. Some may
leave cuts, or bruises, and as a whole this series probably needs a
trigger warning. Having said that, a few readers will finish
and wonder why I'd say anything so daft. Other anthologies have already
envisioned terrain more dangerous than any we may encounter, and the
small patches of undisturbed ground that remain are remarkably tough.
Here's a secret, as old as the world itself: You can break more ground
with water and wind than with a sledgehammer. Acid helps too, of course.
Stories are like water, and wind... and yes, like acid. They flow
between us, and around us, and occasionally even through us. Every now
and then a little ground shifts. How could it not? We want to be there when the ground shifts.

NOTE #1: STRAEON's word count limit is now from 3,300 to 22,000
words. While I have nothing against short-short and borderline-flash fiction, it isn't right for STRAEON. Do not send me any stories shorter than 3,300 words.

NOTE #2: At present, STRAEON is preempted by work on the 2015 Campbellian Anthology. I'll get back to work on STRAEON after the Campbellian antho is released in mid-January.

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Stupefying Stories is a production of Rampant Loon Media LLC. The articles and images posted on this site are the copyrighted properties of their respective creators. The opinions expressed in posted articles and associated comments are those of the authors and readers and do not reflect the views of Rampant Loon Media LLC.